A Blade to Dull the Pain

"You'd do well not to waste your thoughts on things that don't matter."

The sharp ring of steel against steel rang out across the training grounds.

Daisy swept away the blade locked against her own, adjusted her grip, and sprang upward in a swift arc, bringing her sword down toward Matheus's head.

To an ordinary person, the movement would have been too fast to even follow.

Yet Matheus parried it cleanly — as one would expect from someone who had spent years watching Daisy's swordsmanship. He had hunted Demonic Beasts in the north since he was a boy, and after joining the Order of the Emperor's Knights, his training had only grown more rigorous and refined.

Had it been anyone but Daisy, the title of the Empire's finest knight would likely have belonged to Matheus.

Not long after he had first met her, he had been shaken to discover that he could not defeat her — that much smaller, much more slender girl. But he had come to acknowledge her skill soon enough. He had no choice, really, though Matheus was never the petty sort of man who judged others by appearances.

"Your focus is slipping."

Matheus swung his sword in a rapid flurry, pressing the attack.

"What are you talking about? I'm like this precisely because I don't want to think about anything."

Yet for all her words, Daisy's sword went flying from her hand at Matheus's single strike, skittering far across the ground.

It was a mistake she almost never made. Just as he'd said, she couldn't seem to concentrate on the training at all.

Matheus swept his hair back and wiped the sweat from his brow, and from a distance came a chorus of admiring sighs from women. The maids who served in the imperial palace had been peeking at Matheus from behind a pillar.

"If you're that bored, why don't you try romancing one of them?"

Matheus, with his handsome face and gentle manner, was especially popular among women. In looks alone, Franz was hardly inferior to him — but Franz carried a sharp, forbidding air, and he had never once been tender with anyone.

"I told you — don't waste your thoughts on useless things."

Matheus replied with a touch of irritation. Every time someone brought up his popularity, this was how he reacted.

Daisy had always assumed he was simply embarrassed, and she had enjoyed teasing him for it. But right now she showed no interest in ribbing him at all. Her remark about him finding a romance seemed to have slipped out purely out of habit.

It was at that moment that a messenger from Ranke arrived.

When they glimpsed the messenger from Ranke hurrying toward the palace from the training grounds, Matheus followed him alongside Daisy.

"A Demonic Beast has escaped the north and is heading for Sayron. Lord Van der Dite is ashamed to ask, but he requests reinforcements from His Majesty the Emperor."

Karl Van der Dite, lord of Ranke and Matheus's father, was an exceptional knight — but there was no way to prevail against sheer numbers.

"I will go, Your Majesty."

Matheus dropped to one knee at once.

"I will go as well, Your Majesty."

Daisy, who had been standing there in a daze, spoke up abruptly. Franz's brow twitched slightly.

"Rather than sit idle here, I'd rather hunt a beast and loosen up my body. If the thing is making its way toward Sayron, we can slay it and be back before tomorrow."

Daisy looked Franz straight in the eye as she spoke. Her gaze seemed to say that this was not something he could talk her out of.

It was grossly irreverent, yet not a soul in the room thought to call it out. Daisy's eyes carried not so much disrespect as a deep, aching wound.

"Matheus Van der Dite. Daisy Rainer. Go, and see that the beast does not enter the capital."

"We obey your command."

Daisy and Matheus bowed and left the room. Daisy did not stop to wonder what expression Franz wore. Right now, she was simply grateful she could swing a sword at something.

The moment the order was given, Daisy mounted her horse and rode north.

Fortunately, the beast was reported to be heading not toward Chafe, where people lived, but toward Tatir. Tatir was a desert, uninhabited by man.

"Daisy, you mean to take this thing on alone?"

Matheus called out as he urged his horse to catch up behind her.

"The faster we get there, the better. If it actually reaches Sayron, we'll have a disaster on our hands."

Daisy kicked her horse's flank and picked up speed.

The truth was, this once, the welfare of the people was the furthest thing from her mind. She simply wanted to do something familiar, something that would let her forget everything that gnawed at her.

Unfortunately, Daisy and Matheus ran into the beast before they had even left Sayron behind.

A handful of merchants trudging along with their packs came screaming toward them. The two dismounted and came face to face with the beast: a deep green creature about the height of a grown man's waist, with a single enormous eye and a mouth split wide across both sides of its face, crowded with densely packed, jagged teeth.

"No venom."

Years of experience had taught Daisy to identify nearly every species of Demonic Beast on sight.

"If there's no venom, I can finish it off myself."

Matheus drew his sword from its sheath.

"I can kill the venomous ones on my own too."

Even as she said it, Daisy leapt into the air. The beast gaped its mouth wide open toward her, and in the instant she drew its gaze, Matheus slipped low and carved a great gash across its belly, from abdomen to jaw. While the beast shrieked in tearing agony, Daisy plunged her sword into the crown of its skull and split it in two.

The beast died spewing green blood.

"It's been a while, and yet that ended far too easily."

Daisy wiped the blood from her face with the back of her hand.

"I could have come alone from the start, honestly."

Matheus clicked his tongue.

"Th-that — does that thing travel all the way to Sayron now?"

The two of them had entirely forgotten the terrified civilians nearby.

"...Before long, the Archduke will send soldiers to the north. Then you'll be able to live in safety, just as you always have. Please don't worry."

Matheus tried to reassure them, but the merchants did not seem to believe a word of it. They bowed their heads repeatedly, then fled in the direction of the Sayron city streets as if running for their lives.

"After seeing that, I doubt I'll sleep for days."

While Matheus clucked his tongue, Daisy was already dragging the beast's corpse away.

"What are you doing?"

"We can't just leave it here."

"It'll turn to ash and disappear in a few days anyway."

"So your plan is to leave it on display here for days and show it to as many people as possible?"

Daisy and Matheus each took hold of one half of the bisected corpse, dragged it all the way out to the desert, and dumped it among the sand dunes.

"Shall we stop for a drink before heading back?"

Matheus said it to Daisy, who was riding her horse at an agonizingly slow pace — a far cry from the headlong rush of the ride out.

"A drink?"

"It's been ages since you've had one. Back in the day, we always finished off a hunt of a few dozen beasts with a round of drinks."

"...I suppose we could..."

Daisy looked less as though she wanted a drink and more as though she simply did not want to return to the imperial palace. Either way, the two of them made their way to a tavern in the Sayron city district and settled in with their cups.

"Should we go back?"

Matheus asked suddenly, watching Daisy drain cup after cup without a word.

"Back? Back where?"

"To Ranke. You and I both belong out there slaying beasts, not idling around here. Seeing one make it all the way down to Sayron — my father and my brothers must be reaching their limit."

Matheus was the youngest son, with three older brothers. His brothers were still in Ranke, fighting the Demonic Beasts at their father's side.

"His Majesty is safe within the palace walls, and Humbert is there to guard him."

Humbert Seimund was one of the Emperor's Knights, more or less subordinate to Daisy and Matheus. A commoner by birth, his raw talent had earned him a place as one of the Emperor's personal guards, and whenever Daisy and Matheus were away, it was Humbert who stood watch over the Emperor in their stead.

"I don't know. You think saying I want to go back means I actually can?"

Daisy spoke flatly, like someone whose feelings had been drained away entirely, and raised her cup again.

How could he bring back the soul that had vanished from Daisy's eyes? That was all Matheus could think about.

He could not fathom what Franz had been thinking — declaring the marriage a mere union of political convenience and yet having a child with the Empress — but he could hardly ask the man directly, nor could he raise it with Daisy.

Daisy had returned from Ranke to the palace like someone possessed, and after a private audience with the Emperor, she had gone silent. What had happened behind those closed doors needed no asking.

Even Verdi, when questioned, had only shaken his head as though he knew nothing at all.

Had Franz truly fallen for the Empress? No one disputed that she was beautiful — but the Franz Matheus knew was not the sort of man to be captivated by a pretty face. Though then again, for all those clear, crystalline blue eyes, he had always been a man whose depths no one could read.

"I can't live like this, not knowing what tomorrow holds."

With Daisy refusing to talk, other people's conversations kept finding their way into Matheus's ears.

"They say Demonic Beasts have already reached Sayron. This isn't something a few extra soldiers can fix."

"Isn't it all because His Majesty is cursed? The Empress died the moment he was born, the beasts have run rampant, Yospanel invaded — and in the end even the previous Emperor never came home from the war."

"They ought to send knights into the Forest of Illusions, or else..."

"Or else what?"

"Or else His Majesty should step down."

At that, the two men tilted their cups paused, glanced around, and shut their mouths — but the other patrons of the tavern were nodding along as if in agreement.

"Did you hear there's to be a protest in the plaza tomorrow?"

"A protest?"

"Demanding they send knights into the Forest of Illusions."

"Would any knight survive that? In the entire history of the Empire, only one ever has."

"But we can't go on living like this either, can we? The moment those beasts pour in, we're finished."

The two men lowered their voices, muttering on like that for a while before shuffling out of the tavern.

Matheus clicked his tongue in sheer disbelief and drank.

"A protest? A protest, of all things. This is Michael Amesis's doing, without question. Our family has spent generations fighting the beasts and bleeding for it, simply because we hold the northern lands. His Majesty himself practically lived in the north before he took the throne. All these years they've sat quiet, and now they choose to protest?"

Matheus raged on, but Daisy gave no reply. She simply sat there, her eyes hollow, staring at nothing in particular.

"They won't be stopped."

After a long silence, Daisy spoke at last.

"What?"

"Sayron is the heart of the Lowes Empire. If Sayron falls, the Empire falls. And His Majesty will... find it hard to bear."

Daisy drank until empty cups crowded the entire table, then rose to her feet.

Yet there was not the slightest hint of drunkenness about her.